by flipflop » Tue Oct 27, 2009 5:26 pm
Nope, but not as scary as the sheer drops on Tibetan roads. Some are snuck on the sides of cliff faces that drop into seemingly bottomless abysses. I measured one on my GPS at over 900m top to bottom, and we were out at 2am on a crystal clear moonlit night, tearing around dirt track bends with no barriers in thick, frozen snow. One side of the bus was almost scraping the cliff itself, the other scooting snow off the narrow ledge into the void. I could just make out the tiny lights of upcoming trucks labouring away far below, like an inverted starry night.
The bus had a chain smoking driver who thought he was at Le Mans, and that was when he wasn't talking over his shoulder to his mate. I just curled up in my maggot at the back and wished I had a rabbit's foot to rub instead of cupping my frozen ballsack for mercy. The AMS didn't help much either, but unlike Chile I was stuck with it in West Tibet. It took me a week in Ali to adjust, before taking another mentallist bus to Mount Kailash.
Fucking terrifying it was, but I wouldn't have missed it for the world ;-)
Cheers
Patriots always talk of dying for their country, and never of killing for their country - Bertrand Russell